The episode opens with Ayumi at a bakery, and she appears to be trying to find an item but hasn’t had any luck finding it. As she leaves the bakery, she sees a man running across the street. After this, the subtitle on the screen says that 10 minutes have passed, and an older man is running in the same direction the other man did, and the older man claims he’s looking for a thief that matches the description of the man who ran by. When Ayumi asks if he’s called the police to report the robbery, he says he should do that and takes out his cell phone. At the same time, Ayumi takes out her Detective Boys communicator and reaches out to the others. When the older man said he hadn’t reported the robbery to the police yet, even though at least 10 minutes had already gone by since the culprit ran past, I already had a hunch that something was off. I didn’t know exactly what, but I just had a feeling that things weren’t what they seemed.

The Detective Boys, along with Detective Takagi, arrive on the scene, which is right by an apartment complex. Someone at the complex comes running down the stairs, saying a body is in one of the units. When the scene is investigated, they find the thief’s red coat and the older man’s bag at the crime scene. Just as this is being puzzled out, another body is found at an izakaya. A suicide note is found by the body at the izakaya that seems to link this deceased individual to both of the other crimes, and it reads like a suicide note. The older man’s missing money is also found in an envelope by this body. The police figure that this man poisoned himself after committing the crimes, but you can tell that Conan isn’t convinced that this is the truth behind these cases.

I really can’t go into much more detail about the story, because I’d be treading into spoiler territory. What I will say is that Conan and the other Detective Boys start picking up pieces of information that support Conan’s belief that this case wasn’t what it appeared on the surface. With the various pieces of information they pick up, they make a very important discovery and leads to Conan confronting the culprit.

I have to give this Detective Boys story some credit, because the writers actually remembered that Ai exists. Not only did she appear in the episode, she also plays an important role in some of the information gathering that the kids do for this case. So many of these anime-only Detective Boys stories exclude Ai and never explain why she isn’t with the group, so it’s very notable when she does appear in one of them.

For an episode that focuses on the Detective Boys, it wasn’t too bad. While the mystery itself may not have been quite as interesting as some of the other anime-only ones have been, at least the Detective Boys weren’t forced to participate in an utterly idiotic story (I’m looking at you, “The Secret of the Insect Man” and “Intrigue at Smile Village”).

The preview for next week shows it’s the first in a multiple part arc. However, I get the feeling that this multiple part arc is an anime-only story and not canon from the manga. The vibe I got from the preview didn’t feel like the same vibe as the recent two-part episode, “Yusaku Kudo’s Detective Show.”

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